> 69% of high school graduates are not ready for college-level science and 54% for math
> The U.S. is ranked 23rd in science and 31st in math on international exams
> Females and minorities are under-represented in STEM fields

To turn this situation around, the U.S. needs to ensure that we have a high-impact teacher in every classroom. That is why we are forming a national STEM Pre-Teaching Society and seekingUSC students who want to found their campus’ chapter.

* Why a STEM pre-teaching society
* The mission and purpose of the group
* The resources & support provided to chapter founders

If you have any questions or would like to request more information, you can use this form or email founding president Manny Soriano directly (mssorian@usc.edu)

As a founder of the ElevatED Pre-Teaching Society at USC, you will not only leave a legacy on campus, but also encourage the next generation of math/science teachers. We will organize seminars and internships in teaching. We plan to host a STEM enrichment after-school program for middle schoolers over spring break and we will organize a STEM enrichment day at Columbia during spring semester.

Just like a pre-law or pre-med society serves as a community of students interested in those professions and supports them to explore the profession, ElevatED enables students to explore the teaching profession to determine how they can be involved in improving STEM education and ending educational inequity.

Students at Stanford, NYU, and Columbia are forming like-minded student groups, and ElevatED is spreading to the top 100 universities.

Medically themed TV shows cover a wide range of genres; they include comedies such as Scrubs, dramas such as Grey’s Anatomy, and soap operas such as General Hospital—the longest-running American soap opera currently in production. Too often the scientific-relevance of treatments presented on such shows is difficult to grasp and inaccurate. Research presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting in 2010 accordingly found that 46 percent of seizure cases depicted on medical dramas were subject to inappropriate treatments.

Along these lines, American news outlets are often criticized for presenting health-related news items in a sensationalist and distorted manner. Panelists for this event will consider the relationship between health issues and their representations in the media. Do TV producers and filmmakers have any ethical obligations to accurately present medical cases? How do current depictions of health on TV and in the news impact the way viewers seek out and view medical treatment?

USC LEVAN INSTITUTE FOR HUMANITIES AND ETHICSThe USC Levan Institute engages students with the timeless values at the core of our humanity, promotes moral reflection and understanding of self, facilitates multidisciplinary dialogue, and encourages students to make a positive impact across society and the globe.

The USC Brittingham Social Enterprise Lab‘s monthly Lunch & Learn speaker series is continuing its Spring Lunch & Learn series on February 25th! Come join us for our next installation in our power-packed line up of exciting movers and shakers in the field of Social Enterprise!

This month’s discussion is a focus on community healthcare featuring Ritchie Geisel, President and CEO of Bienvenidos Children’s Center. Get ready to hear about the great work Bienvenidos has been doing to deliver a comprehensive array of services that empower children and their families, are culturally responsive, and are effective models of prevention and intervention. Bring your friends, enjoy a free lunch on us, and hear about the exciting collaboration between healthcare, business, social innovation, and non profits.

Ritchie Geisel was chosen to lead Bienvenidos as its President and CEO in 2009. He brings over two decades of business experience in senior leadership positions in the nonprofit sector, helping to lead two of those organizations through processes of transformational change. Ritchie began his career in academic fundraising and has since been focused on social service organizations. After earning a degree in history from Princeton University, Ritchie went on to obtain an MBA from Stanford University. As a businessman, he has a strong track record in leadership and organizational acumen, which was recognized when he received one of four “Leadership Impact Awards” presented by the Center for Nonprofit Management in 2013.

The event will be held on Wednesday, February 25th from 12:30-1:50pm in JKP 210. RSVP requested.

The recent massacre at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Saudi Arabia’s caning of a blogger for religiously offensive speech, and the French government’s crackdown on speech in support of terrorism have intensified debate worldwide over the meaning and limits of public expression. What sorts of speech should be protected and on what grounds? More

Coffeehouse Conversations Program Director and Moderator:Sharon Lloyd, Professor of Philosophy, Law, and Political Science

Wednesday, February 11, 2015 | 4 PM | Herklotz Room, Doheny Memorial Library (DML 233)
**UPDATED LOCATION**
RSVP: http://bit.ly/1BiLUvN
Hugo Slim is the University of Oxford Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict Associate Director and Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations. From 1983-1994, he worked as a frontline humanitarian worker for Save the Children UK and the United Nations in Morocco, Sudan and Ethiopia, the Palestinian Territories and Bangladesh. He is currently leading research on humanitarian ethics that will deliver the first major practical text on humanitarian ethics in war and disaster and will develop new standards of care and accountability in humanitarian organizations. Dr. Slim is the lead instructor for the USC Levan Institute-Oxford Workshops.

Are you a voice for social justice?

Want to have your work read around the world? The Social Justice Review (SJR), a journal sponsored by the USC Levan Institute for Humanities and Ethics, is now accepting outstanding submissions for publication in our inaugural Spring 2015 issue.

While our final deadline is not until midnight on February 9th, early submissions are welcome – whether creative or academic in nature.

As a global platform for social justice, The Social Justice Review offers a forum for undergraduates worldwide who engage—utilizing the written word—with issues of ethnicity, socio-economic status, gender, religion, or other social issues or inequalities.

Managed and edited by students at USC, The Social Justice Review seeks polished, mindfully-crafted undergraduate submissions that resonate with our socially conscious readership—academic, fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, memoir, hybrid prose, etc. We believe in the power of research, narrative, and storytelling as a means of advocating for a more socially just world.

Co-sponsored by the USC Levan Institute Undergraduate Fellows and the Thematic Option Honors Program

Following the workshop on courage, we will now move to the virtue of justice. Aristotle noted that, among the canonical virtues, justice is a special case primarily because people mean so many different things when they appeal to it. Sometimes what is lawful is just, while at other times justice may require unlawful action. Sometimes justice can be equated with fairness, and yet at other times justice may require actions that seem inequitable. According to Aristotle, justice is also difficult to determine because, of the two parties which it involves, one often has a higher status than the other. We will navigate this difficult terrain with special focus, as ever, on how we might best be just in our daily lives.

The discussion will be guided by Levan Institute Fellows and students from Thematic Option and will be moderated by James Collins, Assistant Professor of Classics.